August 21, 2017

As so often occurs, allegations of antisemitism are being leveled at
artists who have taken a principled decision not to participate in a
cultural event which receives sponsorship from the Israeli state.

The 6th artist to withdraw from Berlin’s Pop-Kultur festival on August 23-25, Annie Goh, issued a statement via Facebook
on August 20 explaining the reasons for her cancellation, criticising
misinformation put out by Pop-Kultur’s organisers regarding the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions movement and describing as ‘despicable’ smears
against four Arab artists who withdrew from the festival.

Goh is the second UK Pop-Kultur participant to pull out following a call from Artists for Palestine UK, supported by Brian Eno and Roger Waters, to respect the Palestinian boycott call. Israeli citizenshave also lent support to the boycott call.
Free Speech on Israel rejects the attacks on the Arab artists whose statements to the festival, cited in the APUK letter, make clear the humane and principled reasons for their protest.
By accepting sponsorship from the Israeli Embassy, Pop-Kultur
festival enables Israel to use culture to sanitise and normalise an
apartheid regime.

The cultural boycott is an anti-racist protest against that racist
endeavour. In this case, the Israeli funding was kept secret until just
before the festival, perhaps anticipating and hoping (as it turned out
mistakenly) that they could avoid performers withdrawing from the
festival in protest.

By falsely accusing them of antisemitic motives, festival organisers
try to cover up their own complicity with the racist agenda of the
ongoing “Brand Israel” campaign.

As a Jewish-led campaign, Free Speech on Israel asserts: Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel is not antisemitic.